Praying with Mary through May: The Strongest Woman I Know

Throughout the month of May, we will be sharing posts focused on journeying alongside the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Share your experiences in the comments or on social media using #praywithmary.

I am a mother to the most perfect little toddler in the world. No, he doesn’t sleep through the night and yes, his favorite game is spitting out chewed food, but he’s just amazing and my heart feels about to burst knowing that I’m his mom. His joys are my joys. His pains are my pains. Earlier tonight, he was playing in the hallway when he tripped, smacking his head into the corner of the door frame. The screams and tears that followed were equal only in part to the pain I felt in seeing him hurt – my heart ached and I just wanted to cling to him, to heal him, to making it all better.

With the Stations of the Cross so top of mind, I keep coming back to Jesus seeing his mother. I can not even imagine what that must have been like. Let me say that again: I *can not* even imagine what that must have been like. To be the mother of a child, and to see your child bruised, bloodied, torn, carrying the cross upon which they were about to be nailed to, then seeing them nailed to the cross and left to die…I cry in just even thinking about it.

Mary. What an amazingly STRONG woman. To go through what she went through from the very start – from Jesus’s conception – leading up to this day takes an amazing amount of inner strength. God was with her from the very beginning, and he never left her side. Even with Him by her side, it must have been unimaginable to have to witness Jesus walking through the crowd, towards the mount and seeing him HANGING on the cross. Simeon almost gave her the warning in Luke 2:34-35 when he said, “…he is destined for the fall…a sword will pierce your own soul too.”. I think back to our son’s Baptism and can’t fathom being Mary when she received this news…with the sweet, tiny face of a newborn staring back. Jesus was a baby. Her baby. Imagine living your whole life as a mother of a child – a child so, so special – and knowing that his death was to brutally proceed yours “like a lamb lead to slaughter” (Isaiah 53:7).

So much emotion is passed in a glance. I wonder what that glance between Jesus and his mother was like when they met for the last time. Was it a look of sorrow knowing it was the last time they’d meet on Earth, a look of mutual anguish as each shared some of the others pain, a look of resignation as they both had known this day would come? So much can be said just with a look. One emotion we know that was there was love. Pure, beautiful love between a mother and her child. She tucked away her fear as the angel had instructed her (Luke 1:30) and stayed with Jesus, by his side, through it all.